Regret buying a big house?

[Anonymous]

Yes. Too much furniture, upkeep, taxes, heating bills. Kids don't even use yard, they play in street (cul de sac). I wish we had bought much smaller.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's see. What do I regret about having a house with a study, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen/family room, five bedrooms (one used as a workout room), five full bathrooms, a powder room, a media room, a finished basement, and a mud room? Nothing, really. It's a great house and is zoned for top schools, too.

Were you looking for a different answer?

Not the OP, but did you just look at the subject and post without reading the thread? Plenty of people have pointed out the cons of living in a larger home.

Glad your house is working for you, but we have no use for five full bathrooms, five bedrooms, and a media room. So your house would not fit our needs, and that is fine.

The question was whether those of us living in larger houses have regrets. The answer was not at all.

Perhaps you could work on those reading comprehension skills.

My comprehension skills are fine. You responded to the OP with a nasty post - implying of course everyone loves their big houses, and I was pointing out that several people have chimed in that there it's more complicated and there are downsides.

Take the stick out of your ass, you have contributed nothing but nastiness to this thread.

Here's betting your family members wish their house had more space so they could more easily get away from you.

NP here. Nope, the original PP was being a snarky snob. She deserves to be called out for it. If you are the snarky snob, just stop now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Too much furniture, upkeep, taxes, heating bills. Kids don't even use yard, they play in street (cul de sac). I wish we had bought much smaller.

We built taking up more yard to avoid outdoor upkeep

[Anonymous]

Two other issues:

1. Storage and hoarding. A large house makes it very easy to hold to stuff...forever! This can be bad or good!

2. You become the free hotel for relatives and friends. At about 6K sqft and very good public transport to downtown DC, the mall, etc., our far flung friends feel like they always have a crash pad. Again, this can be good or bad.

[Anonymous]

No regrets. I love all the space. Used to live in a 1918 rowhouse in DC but the lack of space, noisy neighbors and terrible schools sent us packing. I'm sure there are some cities where living there would pass the cost-benefit test. For us, DC was not one of them, and we are much happier living in the suburbs (working our way up to a 6000 SF house if you include the finished basement), neighbors who respect each other's privacy and don't make a ton of noise, and top-ranked schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like many of these posts are not from ppl who live in the DMV

Clearly not. 7200 sq feet? That's in Nebraska for sure.

No. Close maybe? Moved to Denver. Housing prices aren't like inside the beltway, but the house we own and rent out in ashburn is the same size (willowsford). Housing prices here are very similar to suburb prices there as we are in a boom.

WTF? You post on here and live in the Midwest? GTFO. No one on here wants to hear about your 7200 sq ft house that cost you under $2 mill. Go back to your Midwestern country town and talk to your neighbors who can relate to you, because obviously there is a world of difference between your country life and ours.

Huh? I've lived on the east coast my entire life and own a home in ashburn. Just moved this summer. And I've never heard Denver described as the "Midwest" before. We only bought in Ashburn 18 months ago and that home is rented out. Denver is hardly "country life".

Sounds like you need to chill out and smoke a joint, man.

[Anonymous]

We live in a home around 5,000 SF. It's perfect for the 5 of us. I like having a great room (kitchen/family room) and then a living room, dining room and office on the 1st floor. We use ALL of the space- no room off limits. We lived in a smaller house when the kids were little, but as they grew we needed more elbow room. I would still live here when we become empty nesters, but we want to leave the area and go somewhere a little quieter than the NCR.

[Anonymous]

bump

[Anonymous]

6000 square feet. 3 kids and a dog. I want to downsize to ~4500 to 5000 square feet. We really only use about 3-4000 sq feet of our current home but it's hard to find that in newer homes.

This house is just too big and a burden to clean and upkeep. I thought we'd grow into it but we haven't.

[Anonymous]

Our 4k sq ft house is a lot of wasted space for us, a family of 4. There wasn't many other options with the floor plan that we loved. I could do without 1k sq foot. But since we had the extra space we ended up housing 2 family members in the extra rooms. Probably would not have done this if we lived in a smaller home. We each have our own space to retire to or play. Sometimes I miss the small tight house that I grew up in where everyone shared the common space and we spent time and talked to each other together more. Now we just go off into our own spaces to avoid each other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone here regret buying a big house? We found one with a big backyard and a nice neighborhood. Kids are toddlers now so we dont need a whole lot of space inside the home. It is 5,000 sq ft and bigger than what we need, but think maybe we will grow into it. Anyone have any regrets after they did something similar?

I live in a house 1/2 the size of yours. I have a preteen and and teen. We are in need of more space (ours is to communal and there are not enough private spaces to retreat to other than bedrooms). I would be happy with 3,500. 5,000 sounds big but I know I would like it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two other issues:

1. Storage and hoarding. A large house makes it very easy to hold to stuff...forever! This can be bad or good!

2. You become the free hotel for relatives and friends. At about 6K sqft and very good public transport to downtown DC, the mall, etc., our far flung friends feel like they always have a crash pad. Again, this can be good or bad.

You should start charging by signing up on AirBnB. I would hate to subsidize anyone's vacation. They're not visiting me, but really to use my place as some launching pad. Ugh...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. +1 to cleaning the bathrooms. We don't even need to use all of them because we bought to "grow in to" but even though we have our routines and are fine leaving spaces unfurnished and clean, guests and the kids seem to enjoy using every bathroom at least once so that it has to be cleaned. It's annoying just keeping toilet paper and clean towels in all of them. Spaces we hoped to leave empty to grow into are filling up with furniture family brings over unsolicited when they visit. I really dislike having to tend to spaces we don't use now. I wish we'd stuck it out a bit longer in a smaller place and maybe even stayed in a smaller place permanently. There are inconveniences to both choices, and nothing is perfect, but I think there's a lot of glossing over the inconveniences of having too much house. There are a million little things that are individually insignificant but can totally suck up all your time unless you have money to and want to outsource everything. Even then there's no one (that I know it) you can pay to keep and eye out for odd, occasional tasks and put things away. I like knowing what's going on in my home, so it might be different if I had a higher tolerance for chaos.

To hell with that. Donate any crap family brings over. Done and done.

[Anonymous]

Most of the responses here remind of the Americans on House Hunters the series. People in other countries are perfectly fine raising families in much smaller spaces but the Americans will whine about how small a kitchen is or that the bedroom isn't big enough.

[Anonymous]

Live in a 9K sqft house and it's great. DH and I, four kids, grandparents, live-in nanny, and frequent guests from overseas who tend to stay a while. Love the feeling of generosity and life is good.